Annea Lockwood’s compositions range from sound art and environmental sound installations to concert music. In synchronous homage to Christian Barnard’s pioneering heart transplants, in 1968 Lockwood began a series of Piano Transplants in which
defunct pianos were burned, drowned, beached, and planted in an English garden.
Piano Burning continues to be performed around the globe and Piano Garden is permanently installed in the Gwydyr Forest, Wales, Rathmullen, N. Ireland, Caramoor, New York, and Luxembourg. Recent works include Wild Energy with Bob Bielecki - a site-specific installation focused on geophysical, atmospheric and mammalian infra and ultrasound sources, permanently installed at the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, Skin Resonance with Vanessa Tomlinson for bass drums and voice, Inside the Watershed, with Liz Phillips, a riverside installation in Philadelphia, and On Fractured Ground: the peace walls in Belfast, NI, fixed media.
Water has been a recurring focus of her work and her installation/sound maps of the Hudson, the Danube and the Housatonic Rivers have been widely presented. She is a recipient of the SEAMUS (Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States) Lifetime Achievement Award 2020 and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2022.
